


A Clear Road

by icosahedonist (teljhin)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Aging, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14944376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teljhin/pseuds/icosahedonist
Summary: "Getting old, Sid.Feelold."---Age tends to give perspective, and Zhenya never was good at waiting once he'd made up his mind.





	A Clear Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinetreelady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinetreelady/gifts).



> Many thanks to my betas S and Z.

Early mornings were never kind to Zhenya. Not now, and not when he had decidedly more oomph to propel him from his bed. Nowadays there were a few more joints that creaked disconcertedly when he levered himself upright.

But he could deal with aches and pains; if he couldn't, he'd have never made it as a hockey player for so long. It was the one occupational hazard that prepared him for this. He could deal.

Looking over, the other side of the bed was unmade and still slightly warm. No surprise there.

He made his way to the bathroom, at first an ungainly shuffle before finer motor function kicked in. He looked in the mirror, studied the face he knew best. The heavy brows, the snuffling nose. The chapped and chewed lips, even away from the rink. The lines along his eyes ready to crease with laughter. The old scar on his cheek. All the features he had grown with and grown into, his face proceeding comfortably into middle age.

Gray hair, on the other hand: that was the surest sign of getting old, wasn't it? He'd made his peace with his receding hairline, had learned to style it so that the effect was lessened if not completely masked, but the gray and white… That took some getting used to.

He didn't know why this, a minor detail in the compendium of ways he was aging, should bother him. He was following in his papa's footsteps, and _he_ looked fine. But maybe Papa had once struggled silently too.

He trudged downstairs to the smell of coffee in the air. A quick glance in the kitchen got him nothing, so he went for the next most likely place to find Sid. And sure enough, there he was, sitting on the couch with a steaming mug of his beloved decaf French roast beside him, tablet in hand. He still looked as sleep-rumpled as Zhenya felt, and it made his heart twist in his chest. This was all he wanted to wake up to, every day, and he _did_.

Always keen to when someone was staring at him, Sid looked up at Zhenya with a smile. "Hey," he said, voice a little throaty.

"Hey," Zhenya echoed back, and dumped his body heavily next to Sid with a groan. Sid tsked at this display so Zhenya tipped over to lean against Sid's shoulder, letting him take his weight. Sid barely budged; even retired and softer around the edges than he had ever been, Sid was sturdy enough to bear him. 

Sid went back to reading his tablet. Zhenya sighed. When that didn't work, he sighed even louder, and finally Sid flatly said, "Okay, what is it." He didn't put his tablet down, but Zhenya conceded that he'd essentially gotten what he wanted and straightened up.

"Getting old, Sid. _Feel_ old."

Sid hummed. "Of course you are. We _all_ are," he added before Zhenya could work himself up. "No one's immune," he said with a chuckle, vaguely gesturing toward his own head. These days he was rocking the salt and pepper look, though the amount of black hair yet outpaced the gray and white. Sid cut a glance toward Zhenya, asking, "What brought this up? You're not usually this dramatic before noon."

Zhenya ignored that last bit and instead thought the question over. He thought about—crow's feet, and the matching creases on Sid's face. He thought about time rolling on heedless of his worrying and of sharing the small anxieties that plagued him like gnats near overripe fruit. He thought about the face he really knew best, the only one that mattered.

Thinking about getting older led him to thinking about possibilities. They stretched before him like endless roads: take this one, leave that one behind, come across another fork and hope that the unseen obstacles would be easily surmounted. And each of them seemed as difficult as they did easy. Choosing was never easy. Giving up certain things in favor of others wasn't either. But for all his regrets, Zhenya knew which decisions he'd always make. Some roads were destined to be well-trodden.

"Let's have kids."

Zhenya felt Sid still beside him. Carefully, Sid placed the tablet next to his coffee and turned to face Zhenya. His expression was hard to read, but Zhenya felt the same steady sureness in his body as when he would follow Sid out onto the ice. Sid could say no, but he wouldn't. This was a road he could see down for miles.

"Well," Sid began. And then fell silent.

A clear road, but Zhenya felt the nervous need to say, "I know how you feel about kids, Sid. Know you want, same as me."

Sid held up his hand. "I didn't say no. I'm _not_ saying no." He sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth and worried at it: one of his thinking faces. Zhenya wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to prod him into confirming what they both knew.

"Really, though, what brought this up? First you talk about getting old, then you spring kids on me all of a sudden—"

"It's not spring, Sid—"

"You know what I mean." Sid blew out a breath. He snagged the hem of Zhenya's shirt and began fiddling with it. "So?"

Zhenya corralled his myriad thoughts into order, then said, "When I'm young, I'm never think it's happen to me, but of course it does. Getting old," he clarified. "Everyone think this so it's not only me."

"Sure," Sid murmured.

"Think it's natural to want someone, want kids someday, and I know it's what I do. Hockey's not make it easy for have family, you know? Now, we're retire. We're _old_. More old every day, so why we're wait? We're not busy. We're ready, Sid."

"Not getting any younger, eh?" Sid exhaled. He worried at his lip some more, and Zhenya let the silence settle comfortably between them. The clock on the fireplace mantle ticked away; surrounding it were photographs of their families, their friends, themselves. He could see them making room for others: family portraits, first steps, hockey lessons. It was so, so close, he could practically reach out and touch that future.

"Well." Sid drew him back to the present. His eyebrows were drawn down, and for a moment Zhenya feared he'd made a mistake somewhere. But what Sid said was, "It's hard to adopt kids when we're not even married, you know."

Blinking, Zhenya replied, "We don't need marry for kids. We can just…"

Sid fixed him with a dry look. "That might be technically true, but c'mon G. Marriage makes that sort of thing easier. And—" He paused, then levered himself off the couch. "Just a second." He grabbed his coffee, downed it, and padded off, Zhenya watching him go.

This… still wasn't a no, he reasoned with himself, but it also didn't fill him with an overwhelming amount of confidence. But a couple minutes later, Sid walked back in, fiddling nervously with something in his hands.

Zhenya's stomach dropped.

"I imagined this moment a lot differently," Sid said, gently wry. He held out the blue velvet box, and Zhenya took it with nerveless fingers. He fumbled the box open and stared at the gold band nestled there. Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him.

Sid sighed. "I thought _you_ were supposed to be the romantic one."

"I'm most romantic," Zhenya said weakly.

Sid sat down and took the box back. Zhenya let out a feeble protest but cooperated when Sid grabbed his right hand and slid the band on. It fit just right, and Zhenya had to hold back sudden tears. He was getting old, his body wasn't as spry as he'd like, and he still got emotional over Sid's dumb, practical, not-at-all romantic declarations.

Fuck it. He cried a little. He was allowed. And Sid, his dumb, wonderful Sid, cried a little too, and they kissed and laughed and held each other and cried like the old men they were becoming.

Once that first giddy rush of feelings subsided into mere—mere!—joy, Zhenya sniffled and held out his hand for inspection. The ring glimmered fetchingly as he twisted his hand this way and that. "How long you have?" He turned to Sid, whose damp red cheeks made him want to kiss him some more, so of course he did.

Sid pulled back laughing, swiping at his eyes. "A while, I don't know. It's—I thought about it, you know, asking you, and maybe I figured you'd ask first, and things got comfortable, and." He shrugged and smiled helplessly. "You want kids, I want marriage."

"Want both," Zhenya declared. Knowing Sid and how long they'd been "comfortable", he'd probably had the ring for years. He told himself he'd tease Sid about it later.

"So is this a yes?"

"You're not ask question, Sid, how I'm say yes!" But he grinned anyway, practically bursting to be asked.

Sid grinned back. He grabbed Zhenya's hand, squeezed it, and said breathlessly, "Will you marry me?"

Zhenya didn't hesitate. "Yes." A thousand times over, for as long as he lived.

Sid nudged his side, right where he was softest. "Now ask me."

"What, will you have kids with me?"

A giggle overtook Sid momentarily before he replied, "Yeah. Yes. Let's do that." And then there was more kissing, which Zhenya never turned down.

For all the ways he felt old, body and soul, Zhenya still felt a little young too: the thrill of something new just beginning, taking the first steps down a road whose end he couldn't quite see but knew all the same. The gray hairs on his head would only keep multiplying, but what did it matter? This love, he decided, made growing old all the more exciting.


End file.
